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[D&amp;D 5E] Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

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we all know some DMs have that "free feat at level 1" thing right? well im making a campaign where the party members are traveling through the elemental planes and was thinking of giving them a free cantrip based off one of the four elements (shape water, mold earth, create fire and gust). does this seem a bit to much/powerful?

EDIT: it would only be one of the spells determined at random

I'd actually be wary of that random thing. You're making a single random roll that is going to stay with the character, forever. So the big dumb but wary fighter gets an intelligence attack cantrip and basically ignores it or rolls one higher and gets wisdom based sacred flame and has a useful ranged/non-ac attack for their entire career. Definitely a thing I'd hand tailor to the characters to avoid them being useless or overly synergistic based on a single die roll.

None of those are particularly powerful and i would not be particularly powerful. Create fire, while an attack isn't likely to be stronger than the others because more powerful attacks exist for most Int-based casters. While the rest of it can still definitely have use

I would suspect that non-casters would have better options in most cases anyway. In my mind I'd want to tailor it regardless just to ensure an even spread of powers and maximum enjoyment for my players based on their own elemental preferences. I'd have them list their favored elements in order in secret to the DM and then have them do a straight d20 roll during character creation. Then go in order down the list with each player getting their top available choice. Or take away the random element completely and let your players hash it out on their own.

we all know some DMs have that "free feat at level 1" thing right? well im making a campaign where the party members are traveling through the elemental planes and was thinking of giving them a free cantrip based off one of the four elements (shape water, mold earth, create fire and gust). does this seem a bit to much/powerful?

EDIT: it would only be one of the spells determined at random

I'd actually be wary of that random thing. You're making a single random roll that is going to stay with the character, forever. So the big dumb but wary fighter gets an intelligence attack cantrip and basically ignores it or rolls one higher and gets wisdom based sacred flame and has a useful ranged/non-ac attack for their entire career. Definitely a thing I'd hand tailor to the characters to avoid them being useless or overly synergistic based on a single die roll.

None of those are particularly powerful and i would not be particularly powerful. Create fire, while an attack isn't likely to be stronger than the others because more powerful attacks exist for most Int-based casters. While the rest of it can still definitely have use

I would suspect that non-casters would have better options in most cases anyway. In my mind I'd want to tailor it regardless just to ensure an even spread of powers and maximum enjoyment for my players based on their own elemental preferences. I'd have them list their favored elements in order in secret to the DM and then have them do a straight d20 roll during character creation. Then go in order down the list with each player getting their top available choice. Or take away the random element completely and let your players hash it out on their own.

Not going to give it away completely as some of my group visits this thread but random might not be the right word, they will have a chance to choose what they want, it just will not be that obvious what it is they are choosing immediately

think the pebble under the cup but there are 4 cups and they have something on them that says what is under that cup but it is tiny and really hard to see without a magnifying glass

If anyone else is interested in creating new settings, one idea I've had is to use Minecraft to make the map for me, making new worlds until I find one I like the look of and using odd details as inspiration for D&D adventures. I downloaded a mod called JourneyMap that automatically maps the world.

I found a town right next to a mountain that had both water and lava flowing down the side; maybe in my D&D game the mountain could hold bound water and fire elemental entombed within it, which could pose a threat to the nearby town. I also downloaded a mod that generates glowing coral reefs on the seafloor. Maybe merfolk could live there?

If anyone else is interested in creating new settings, one idea I've had is to use Minecraft to make the map for me, making new worlds until I find one I like the look of and using odd details as inspiration for D&D adventures. I downloaded a mod called JourneyMap that automatically maps the world.

I found a town right next to a mountain that had both water and lava flowing down the side; maybe in my D&D game the mountain could hold bound water and fire elemental entombed within it, which could pose a threat to the nearby town. I also downloaded a mod that generates glowing coral reefs on the seafloor. Maybe merfolk could live there?

I've recently decided that one of the continents in my setting is sunken, essentially a mix of the different aquatic races. They've made no contact with surface dwellers.

we all know some DMs have that "free feat at level 1" thing right? well im making a campaign where the party members are traveling through the elemental planes and was thinking of giving them a free cantrip based off one of the four elements (shape water, mold earth, create fire and gust). does this seem a bit to much/powerful?

EDIT: it would only be one of the spells determined at random

I'd actually be wary of that random thing. You're making a single random roll that is going to stay with the character, forever. So the big dumb but wary fighter gets an intelligence attack cantrip and basically ignores it or rolls one higher and gets wisdom based sacred flame and has a useful ranged/non-ac attack for their entire career. Definitely a thing I'd hand tailor to the characters to avoid them being useless or overly synergistic based on a single die roll.

None of those are particularly powerful and i would not be particularly powerful. Create fire, while an attack isn't likely to be stronger than the others because more powerful attacks exist for most Int-based casters. While the rest of it can still definitely have use

I would suspect that non-casters would have better options in most cases anyway. In my mind I'd want to tailor it regardless just to ensure an even spread of powers and maximum enjoyment for my players based on their own elemental preferences. I'd have them list their favored elements in order in secret to the DM and then have them do a straight d20 roll during character creation. Then go in order down the list with each player getting their top available choice. Or take away the random element completely and let your players hash it out on their own.

Yea, like, the worst thing it might potentially do is to have your casters maybe gamble at not taking an attack power if they know ahead of time because they might get create bonfire.

If anyone else is interested in creating new settings, one idea I've had is to use Minecraft to make the map for me, making new worlds until I find one I like the look of and using odd details as inspiration for D&D adventures. I downloaded a mod called JourneyMap that automatically maps the world.

I found a town right next to a mountain that had both water and lava flowing down the side; maybe in my D&D game the mountain could hold bound water and fire elemental entombed within it, which could pose a threat to the nearby town. I also downloaded a mod that generates glowing coral reefs on the seafloor. Maybe merfolk could live there?

I've recently decided that one of the continents in my setting is sunken, essentially a mix of the different aquatic races. They've made no contact with surface dwellers.

I definitely feel like there should be more extensive contact with undersea civilizations. What are the merfolk doing down there?

I think we are getting close to the end of our campaign against the rat men. Probably another few sessions and that will be the close on this story of ours. Its been the nature of this GM, he doesnt like high level play beyond like 15 and dealing with gods and demons and metaplanes of existence.

Which leads me into this segue in that I've just found out about Battle Chasers: Night War and I really like the art style of it.
So much so, I want to try and make a war golem way of the four elements monk that looks like Calibretto from that game.

The elemental spells wouldn't be actual spells, just contraptions and and gizmos capable of war crimes flipping form his hands and carapace.

That feel when you haven't gotten any P&P action for months because you're working six 10s a week, but all you can think of is characters and campaigns you want to run.

I've decided my next campaign is going to be a hex crawl, a la Hexographer. I'm not terribly fond of sweeping storylines, but my regulars aren't great at acting on personal motivations. I think giving them an actual board to explore would be good, and they're bad at math so making them plot a course and buy rations will end up in hijinks. I've also decided to make my own permanent setting. Normally I just steal from everything and make shit up on the fly, but for this I'm going to do some light world building.

There's six major powers on this continent, being the Allied Human Nobility, the hobgoblin slavers, orc clans, the kobold empire (led by a blue dragon), the lizardfolk tribes, and halfling cabals. The largest war ever recorded, a world war, erupted on a man-made land bridge spanning what is essentially the mediterranean ocean; whoever controlled the bridge got access to the deserts in the south east and could get a limitless-and cheap-supply of gold from its mines (I just finished reading Dune). The entire war started on an act of espionage from the kobolds, leading the other factions to believe that the orcs were going to lead a pogrom against the humans and lizardfolk. Battle lines were drawn, Humans, Halflings, Lizardfolk against Kobolds, Orcs, and Hobgoblins.

Pitched battles occurred at the center of the bridge, and when it seemed like the orcs would win, the kobolds encouraged a slave rebellion of goblins against hobgoblins, and the kobold force itself tore apart the over-extended orcish army. The allied forces shrugged and proclaimed victory, taking control of the land bridge. The kobolds seized and destroyed the orcish homelands, driving their women and children to the land bridge, while the goblins commit genocide against the hobgoblins.

During the campaign, the isolationist elves (who are more faelike in this setting) commit their own genocide by burning the lizardfolk's swamps. This leaves the already-stretched human kingdoms burdened with lizardfolk, orc, and hobgoblin refugees on top of the nomadic halflings they already accommodate.

My plot threads here are:

Refugee crisis
Lizardfolk wanting to reclaim their homeland/revenge against elves/find survivors
Squabbles of the nobility
Gold rush, and the gnolls and tabaxi who live in the desert
Looting the hobgoblin empire because chaotic goblins can't run a functioning society
Orcs wanting their religion represented in law
Hobgoblins being lynched because they were slavers
Kobolds controlling almost the entire northern coast, and their inevitable war on goblin lands and sorties to the southElves being dicks
Dwarven banks and their neutrality during the war

So, that's the metaplot. Worst comes to worst the players will take the obvious path and either plunder hobgoblin lands, or go prospect for gold. I'm hoping one of them will want to be a king or something, but right now I'm just working on fleshing out towns and minifactions.

Does anyone here use OrcPub? Is there a way to add extra spells to a character without manually entering them? My character picked up a couple extra spells from our adventure and I'd like to just print them out on cards with the rest rather than put tabs in my PHB.

I'm designing an initial starting region for a campaign. Here's what I have so far:

- The region was first explored about seventy years ago by an adventuring party. They discovered a set of hot springs with magical rejuvenating properties along the side of a mountain populated by fire newts, who worshiped an elemental being they believed provided the springs. The adventurers drove out the fire newts and claimed the springs, and soon thereafter one member of the party decided to retire from adventuring and use his wealth to build a spa for the use of a nearby kingdom's nobility.
- Years pass. The spa village is built alongside the mountain, along with a nearby port town that welcomes the visiting lords and ladies and receives supplies for the spa. The spa village is a place of rest and rejuvenation whereas the port becomes a place where visiting nobles can mingle and deal with one another away from home.
- Disaster struck twenty years ago when a surge of elemental energy pulsed from deep below the mountain. The warm and pleasant waters trickling from the springs were replaced by lethal torrents of superheated water coated in fire, elemental monsters arose from both the pools and fissures in the ground, and waves of heat melted metal and set wood aflame. In very little time the spa village was destroyed and nearly all its workers and visitors perished.
- With the mountain and its famous springs having become a death trap there was no reason for anyone other than curious arcanists looking to study the phenomenon to come through the port anymore. No more wealthy visitors meant that the port quickly fell into poverty and disarray as anyone with the means to leave did so. Those left behind do their best to deal with the dilapidated state of their home, all the while wondering if some elemental terror could one day emerge from the nearby mountain that once have them prosperity.
- Within the last few years the people living in the farmlands created around the port have begun to receive mysterious blessings, such as damaged equipment suddenly becoming mended or crops producing record yields. Many correctly attribute this good fortune to benevolent fey, but they do not know the whole story. A good-hearted gnome from the Feywild named Wrerra Thimblebean took pity on the people's plight and blamed the nobility of the nearby kingdom for abandoning them. Wrerra entered into a warlock pact with a fey dragon, pledging to rob the nobles' trade caravans, ships, and even manors (without killing those she steals from) and give her patron a large share of the loot in exchange for receiving magical fey gifts from him that she can secretly bestow upon the poor people of the port. Wrerra and her compatriots have drawn the ire of the nobility, and if she is stopped the port will no longer receive fey boons.

I imagine the player characters may be mercenaries dispatched by a group of noble merchant lords to the port after a number of raids by Wrerra and her followers strike the ships passing by the neglected settlement. They could learn the history of the port, discover that Wrerra is a Robin Hood-like figure, and decide to do their part by investigating possible threats in the region (such as whatever was behind the hot springs' transformation).

I was making a homebrew world where I slap-dashed all my favorite tropes... but then I realized that Eberron is 90% of what I want and dusted off those books instead. I'm tempted to pick up a few more of the old 3.5 splats if I can find them reasonably priced. They're incredibly dense with well developed fluff, and reading through the decrepit 3.5 mechanics is worth a laugh. It's funny to think that there was a time where it all made sense to me and I thought it was the pinnacle of game design. It's also a wonder that I was able to afford all this stuff when I was a poor college student, or even moreso that I held on to these books for 13+ years.

Does anyone here use OrcPub? Is there a way to add extra spells to a character without manually entering them? My character picked up a couple extra spells from our adventure and I'd like to just print them out on cards with the rest rather than put tabs in my PHB.

OrcPub was significantly gutted at the end of October due to WotC saying, "Nope, can't have a better character calculator than ours, even if we took a sizable chunk of profits, can't have it."

So OrcPub released some pretty decent tools inside of it and the ability to make files of your homebrew stuff.
Check Reddit. Last time I was there, people had already made .orcpub files that put all of the Player's Handbook options and spells back into OrcPub. The only caveat is that its labled 'Homebrew' and you have to trust that they did the math properly. Some of them were saying they were waiting for OrcPub to toss in more toggle switches for the math side of the tools before they continued on with other 5e books.

I was making a homebrew world where I slap-dashed all my favorite tropes... but then I realized that Eberron is 90% of what I want and dusted off those books instead. I'm tempted to pick up a few more of the old 3.5 splats if I can find them reasonably priced. They're incredibly dense with well developed fluff, and reading through the decrepit 3.5 mechanics is worth a laugh. It's funny to think that there was a time where it all made sense to me and I thought it was the pinnacle of game design. It's also a wonder that I was able to afford all this stuff when I was a poor college student, or even moreso that I held on to these books for 13+ years.

I'm also looking through officially published material for inspiration, though I have a history of spending more time reading and making notes than I do actually using them.

Right now I'm looking at the 2E Jakandor books, which have a very well defined hunter-gatherer civilization called the Knorr that I'm mining for ideas regarding animistic societies. For example, the Knorr value family and clan honor over inflexible law (eveything's fine if everyone acts honorably, but wronged parties are expected to personally respond to dishonorable actions against them through righteous vengeance), they revere a feared deity of senseless violence and predation called War Mother, they make frequent use of rituals throughout all members of society (granting most Knorr at least minor spellcasting ability), they distrust arcane magic, and they treat the spirits of nature as valued members of the family and the clan while simultaneously fearing to speak the names of dead family members lest they awake from eternal slumber as undead.

Each clan's guardian spirit also has a specially crafted gigantic golem body it can animate to fight the clan's enemies, so that's pretty cool, too.

So in my IRL Dark Sun game, the players fought Zenlot the Mighty, a Psurlon warrior who is extremely corpulent and extremely boisterous. He was guarding an ancient storage of metal weapons that the players have now claimed, after venturing into the Undertyr and braving The Crawl, a long series of extremely tiny collapsed tunnels that are a product of an old merchant district that has sunk under the city of Tyr.
He believes in honor and fancies himself a fencer, except he fences with greatswords.
Heres the statblock if anyone wants to run it, I had great fun with it, and I also used two variant rules that you can choose to leave or put in.
Variant Rule 1, Zenlot the Very Mighty: Zenlot does not roll initiative, instead, he goes on initiative counts 20 and 10, acting twice in a round.
Variant Rule 2, Zenlot the Regurgitator: On Initiative count 20, Zenlot vomits 2d6 Intellect Devourers that all have 1 HP each. They go on Initiative Count 15.

Do PCs know (or should they?) when they roll well or poorly? I've been wondering about this a bit. So for example if my PC makes an active Perception check to look for active traps and I roll a 1, my next instinct is to pull out the 10 foot pole (or cast a detection spell, try something else, whatever). But would my PC actually fail and realize his failure? On the other hand, there's plenty of circumstances where a PC would know the outcome, if a Rogue bungles a familiar lock and snaps his pick, or if the Fighter scores a lucky hit against a tough-as-nails dragon. But things like Knowledge checks? The most I'd expect is the PC to mutter "how do I not know this? I studied it at the Academy!"

Do PCs know (or should they?) when they roll well or poorly? I've been wondering about this a bit. So for example if my PC makes an active Perception check to look for active traps and I roll a 1, my next instinct is to pull out the 10 foot pole (or cast a detection spell, try something else, whatever). But would my PC actually fail and realize his failure? On the other hand, there's plenty of circumstances where a PC would know the outcome, if a Rogue bungles a familiar lock and snaps his pick, or if the Fighter scores a lucky hit against a tough-as-nails dragon. But things like Knowledge checks? The most I'd expect is the PC to mutter "how do I not know this? I studied it at the Academy!"

What do you guys think?

I think like you imply, it's on a case by case basis. If you try to find something and come up short your character simply didn't find anything. They may notice they're making a bunch of noise if they fail a stealth check but if their foe hears them via tremorsense they might not realize they failed until it's too late.

The actual answer to this question is to fail forward and have the consequence of a failed roll follow inexorably from that failed roll. If you failed to find traps and a trap existed, you spring it, otherwise you take too much time searching and your party has to spend a ration or something, or runs into a wandering monster, or a timed enchantment or buff wears off.

If I'm running a game, I'd usually roll the PC's "look for traps" check behind my DM screen, so they don't know that they rolled a 1.

If for some reason I let the PC roll it, they got a 1, and then said "I pull out my 10 foot pole and start poking around" I think I would say the use of the pole to poke around was included in their looking for traps, they just did a really bad job of poking. If they wanted to spend resources on a spell after the poor roll, I might say "as far as your character is concerned, it's safe, why would they cast that spell?"

If I don't want to give the game away to my players that there's a trap about I sometimes roll a stealth check on behalf of the trap and compare it to the PCs' Passive Perception. I give it a modifier based on its spot DC - 10 e.g. if it had a DC15 to spot it, I'd roll a d20 + 5. It's much the same as rolling perception on their behalf, but I only gotta roll once.

I think it depends on the check. For perception checks I think the character simply doesn't notice anything and thus wouldn't change how they act. Imagine your character is walking down a hallway. Their plan is to continue to the door at the end of the hall. The DM has you roll a perception check and you roll poorly. The character's plan is still to continue to the door. If you had rolled well and they noticed something their plan might change. Perception checks are some of the hardest checks to not meta game because they clue the player into the fact that something might happen but they don't necessarily inform the character. I think one of the best way for players to improve their role playing is to work on not meta gaming their checks. As a DM this is where I encourage my players push themselves and it often is a good jumping off point for players to start really getting into how their character would react.

In the course of developing my new setting I've went from never having even heard of fire newts to wanting to design some kind of society for them.

The idea is that seventy years ago the fire newts were driven from the cluster of hot springs on the mountainside they called home, but following a wild surge of elemental magic twenty years ago the region became even more ideal for them and inhospitable for the humans that had run them off before. Many more hot springs and geysers have formed in the valley (The Cauldrons) below the mountain (Dragon Bile Mountain, formerly Weeping Dragon Mountain) and a deep chasm (The Steaming Rift) that constantly billows steam veils the fire newts' territory from outsiders and creates a difficult to pass barrier.

I think it depends on the check. For perception checks I think the character simply doesn't notice anything and thus wouldn't change how they act. Imagine your character is walking down a hallway. Their plan is to continue to the door at the end of the hall. The DM has you roll a perception check and you roll poorly. The character's plan is still to continue to the door. If you had rolled well and they noticed something their plan might change. Perception checks are some of the hardest checks to not meta game because they clue the player into the fact that something might happen but they don't necessarily inform the character. I think one of the best way for players to improve their role playing is to work on not meta gaming their checks. As a DM this is where I encourage my players push themselves and it often is a good jumping off point for players to start really getting into how their character would react.

This is what passive checks exist for. You can check passive perception or passive insight without alerting the player that a check has occurred, for things like traps and so forth.

If they actively search for something and don't find it because they rolled low, then it's because they thought something was there, and it's perfectly reasonable for a player to find nothing and go 'there's got to be something here, I know it' if they're so inclined.

I think it depends on the check. For perception checks I think the character simply doesn't notice anything and thus wouldn't change how they act. Imagine your character is walking down a hallway. Their plan is to continue to the door at the end of the hall. The DM has you roll a perception check and you roll poorly. The character's plan is still to continue to the door. If you had rolled well and they noticed something their plan might change. Perception checks are some of the hardest checks to not meta game because they clue the player into the fact that something might happen but they don't necessarily inform the character. I think one of the best way for players to improve their role playing is to work on not meta gaming their checks. As a DM this is where I encourage my players push themselves and it often is a good jumping off point for players to start really getting into how their character would react.

This is what passive checks exist for. You can check passive perception or passive insight without alerting the player that a check has occurred, for things like traps and so forth.

If they actively search for something and don't find it because they rolled low, then it's because they thought something was there, and it's perfectly reasonable for a player to find nothing and go 'there's got to be something here, I know it' if they're so inclined.

I get that but the original question was asking how much a character would change their course of action based on a bad roll. In my reply I maybe wasn't clear that the DM is asking for a perception check because the player was actively searching. It remains the same regardless; with a bad roll the character doesn't notice something even if they are actively searching and thus their plan of action does not change.

And here we get to something I talked about earlier: does Passive Perception (or any skill really) replace the number if you roll under it? Some DMs will say yes, others no. I tend towards the former but the latter can make sense and lead to some funny results.

As to the question of do you know if you tanked a roll, that's metagaming in my mind. Same as one person looking after another. Unless you have a good reason that room/desk/wall/whatever is searched and no new roll is allowed.

It just completely takes away immersion to try and work around bad rolls. Role-playing starts when you roll a 1 imho. As a player I try to stop it from happening with my group. It is difficult though, because we do want to WIN.

And here we get to something I talked about earlier: does Passive Perception (or any skill really) replace the number if you roll under it? Some DMs will say yes, others no. I tend towards the former but the latter can make sense and lead to some funny results.

As to the question of do you know if you tanked a roll, that's metagaming in my mind. Same as one person looking after another. Unless you have a good reason that room/desk/wall/whatever is searched and no new roll is allowed.

A hard 'no' from me.

At level 11 Rogues learn Reliable Talent. Any roll of 9 or lower on a skill check in which you can add proficiency is treated as a 10. Automatically using your Passive scores if you roll lower is many times more powerful than this ability, and also makes it worthless.

That said, I'm not against using the old Take 10 rule from 3/3.5 (Which is basically what Passive Perception is doing).

Taking 10
When your character is not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 10. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, calculate your result as if you had rolled a 10. For many routine tasks, taking 10 makes them automatically successful. Distractions or threats (such as combat) make it impossible for a character to take 10. In most cases, taking 10 is purely a safety measure —you know (or expect) that an average roll will succeed but fear that a poor roll might fail, so you elect to settle for the average roll (a 10). Taking 10 is especially useful in situations where a particularly high roll wouldn’t help.

I really think it is case by case. You search the door for traps, you roll a 4, you've failed to find the trap, it looks clear to you. You try to pick the door's lock and fail... the door doesn't unlock... You know you've failed because the door isn't unlocked.

Now a player might say... "Hey every door in this place has been trapped. Why would this be any different? Someone fetch me my ten foot pole!", and thats just good play, but they don't get to just try to disarm a trap they can't see because they are sure there's a trap there.

For me, calling for skill checks is only interesting if there is a cost of failure. So, for example, if there is a locked door in a dungeon, and the rogue wants to pick it, I first lay out the risk. Maybe it's an old lock, and a failed check breaks the lock, so if they still want to go through that door, whatever is on the other side is going to know they're coming. Maybe there are roaming monsters in the dungeon. Maybe the guards in the baron's house are patrolling. If none of those things exist, then the rogue just picks the lock and we move on. Most of the time, if the party is safe and just cleaning up stuff they hadn't explored before, a locked door is just a bit of extra flavor for the rogue to get the spotlight for a second.

For me, often times the answer to a failed check is to simply add "yet" or "not right this second". Meaning, sure, you can pick this lock, but it's giving you a little trouble right now, do you want to keep spending time while [bad things are coming]? Yes, you absolutely know about this obscure thing, but man, was it fire or thunder that hurt it, you can't remember. Or the name of that god is on the tip of your tongue, but right this second you're too distracted to remember it.

If the party is safe, and they're trying to do stuff that they're good at / trained in, I don't ask for rolls. I just tell them answers to questions they ask honestly. When the party is just slowly proceeding down an empty dungeon hallway, carefully checking the floor/walls, I don't find it particularly interesting to make them roll dice to see what they notice. They're professional adventurers, with a trained rogue with them (presumably). Of course they spot the traps. Now, if they have to rush, say, to stop a fiendish ritual from completing, now we're talking. If they get ambushed / have a fight, and there are trap triggers all over the place, *now* we have something.

I also like to use the AngryDM's Click Rule. That is - if a player triggers a trap, you say "You hear a click - what do you do". The player describes what defensive action they take. Maybe they raise a shield, or dive to the floor (straight down or to the side), or whatever. This gives them advantage/disadvantage on their saving throw. You can describe stuff to help them figure out what actions might be helpful if they're paying attention. Maybe there are corpses in the hallway with arrows in them. Or there are scrape marks along the ground. Or whatever trap is about to spring on them, you can describe the environment to fit it. So then that can reward either careful searching, or someone who spends an action / time on looking around at their surroundings. Usually the first time players enter a new environment, I offer that info the first time they come across it. Afterwards, I find I don't have to say anything - players will search and find that kind of stuff themselves.

Now, imagine you enter the final room of the evil villagers sacrificing a noble Kobold in the name of the spring harvest. You can see broken arrow heads and recognize pressure plates in the tile throughout the chamber, and you can see the scrapes from a swinging blade on the floor.

I think it depends on the check. For perception checks I think the character simply doesn't notice anything and thus wouldn't change how they act. Imagine your character is walking down a hallway. Their plan is to continue to the door at the end of the hall. The DM has you roll a perception check and you roll poorly. The character's plan is still to continue to the door. If you had rolled well and they noticed something their plan might change. Perception checks are some of the hardest checks to not meta game because they clue the player into the fact that something might happen but they don't necessarily inform the character. I think one of the best way for players to improve their role playing is to work on not meta gaming their checks. As a DM this is where I encourage my players push themselves and it often is a good jumping off point for players to start really getting into how their character would react.

This is what passive checks exist for. You can check passive perception or passive insight without alerting the player that a check has occurred, for things like traps and so forth.

If they actively search for something and don't find it because they rolled low, then it's because they thought something was there, and it's perfectly reasonable for a player to find nothing and go 'there's got to be something here, I know it' if they're so inclined.

I get that but the original question was asking how much a character would change their course of action based on a bad roll. In my reply I maybe wasn't clear that the DM is asking for a perception check because the player was actively searching. It remains the same regardless; with a bad roll the character doesn't notice something even if they are actively searching and thus their plan of action does not change.

I don't think that's accurate.

If you're checking to see if a player notices a trap they're not actively searching for, then ideally you should be using a passive check so that neither the player nor the character is aware there was something to notice.

If a player actively says "I think this door might be trapped" and specifically searches the door for traps, then even if they find nothing it's still entirely reasonable in-character for them to go "Ugh, I still don't feel good about it. I can't find anything, but I still think this door might be trapped."

Their original plan of action arguably might not change, but their plan of action wasn't "proceed as if nothing is wrong unless you find a trap", it was "try to find the traps on this probably-trapped door"

Their original plan of action arguably might not change, but their plan of action wasn't "proceed as if nothing is wrong unless you find a trap", it was "try to find the traps on this probably-trapped door"

This totally fits if they've identified the door as probably trapped, but some players check for traps or use other similar abilities compulsively.

I had a player who had Detect Magic as a cantrip and used it essentially every time I described anything. Luckily I was able to curb that behavior by telling her that typically it is a good idea to only use those spells when you think you'll find something (because it's tiresome both for the character and for the table etc) and she immediately got it and started casting it only when she suspected there was something to be found.

But, if you've got an overly cautious player who compulsively checks for traps at every juncture and decides to break out the ten foot pole for every single digit roll on the ol' d20, that's problematic. The way I would solve that problem is by simply continuing to enforce the policy of "if you fail a roll you suffer a consequence." If there was a trap, you spring it. If not, and you roll poorly, I will drain some resources from you. That way each roll carries some risk, and if each roll carries risk you will only take on that risk when there is reasonable suspicion it will be worthwhile.

If a player is compulsively checking for traps on every door, then he's playing a pretty paranoid character - all the more reason for him to plausibly be convinced that the door is still trapped after searching it and finding nothing.

Players slowing down the game by pixelbitching a dungeon is a different issue from whether it's metagaming to continue to treat a door as dangerous if you search it for traps and roll poorly.